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Investors should keep an eye on this promising way to treat cancer...For all the talk about biotechs being nimble, it's a big pharma that looks like it'll be the first company to launch a chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) product...Novartis announced last week that the Food and Drug Administration accepted its application to market tisagenlecleucel-T...in patients with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia who are relapsed and refractory to other therapies...A few days later, Kite Pharma completed its application for axicabtagene ciloleucel...Kite's application could be accepted early, putting it less than two months behind Novartis…Since CAR-T therapies are personalized treatments that have to be made individually for each patient, they're likely to be expensive to produce and therefore require a premium price. The first company to get a CAR-T therapy approved will set the price, which later companies may have to match unless they can justify a higher price with higher efficacy...With prices that will probably exceed those of current cancer treatments, investors should expect some pushback from insurers. One way Novarits and Kite can get around the cost issue is by offering money-back guarantees...Kite's and Novartis' CAR-T therapies are just the tip of the iceberg for this new way to treat cancer...

Federal prosecutors in Philadelphia said on Wednesday that they had indicted five people, including two research scientists, on charges of stealing trade secrets about drugs to treat cancer and other diseases from GlaxoSmithKline...the two scientists, Yu Xue and Lucy Xi, worked at Glaxo’s research facility in Upper Merion, Pa., and emailed and downloaded confidential data about a dozen or more company products to associates who planned to sell and market the trade secrets through a company they set up in China, called Renopharma...to conceal their crime, Ms. Xue and two other associates, Tao Li and Yan Mei, agreed to put the proceeds in the name of Ms. Xue’s twin sister...who was also charged. Ms. Xi worked with Ms. Xue at Glaxo and was married to Mr. Mei...the defendants boasted that their company, based in Nanjing, had received some financial support and free laboratory space from the government and that its ultimate goal was to develop its own antibody drugs.